“Alice.” His voice grew louder and more heated with each word. “The box.”
She stared at him, right into those black eyes of his. This wasn’t him. He didn’t give orders—not to her. As much as she told him over and over again that the house and the farm and the family were theirs—that all of it belonged to him as much as to her—he still seemed more likely to ask permission than to give a command. As if it was hers to own, and he was only renting. This old man had a claim on Tom that she did not, or he was able to summon up some part of Tom that was off-limits to her. Whatever the old man had ordered him to do, Tom was spooked by it. If he wanted the box that badly, she would get it. But the box meant nothing; it was what was inside the box that mattered.
Alice edged toward the closet. Inside, she pulled the chain and in the burst of light she got her fingers around a hatbox and pulled it out from under a stack of cardboard cartons: hats and shoes she had not worn in years. Two of the boxes tumbled to the floor with a hollow thud. She handed the hatbox to Tom and he peeled open the round cover. Buttressed on all sides by wadded tissue paper was a small metal box secured with a latch. It could have held tools or tackle, but when Tom opened it the only contents were a holstered revolver wrapped in an oilcloth and a box of cartridges. Without looking up at Alice, he unwrapped the gun and felt its weight in his hand. Tom spun the cylinder and released a catch: the barrel hinged open, revealing six empty chambers. He drew back the hammer and pulled the trigger. Alice flinched at the sharp sound it made. With one hand, he worked six bullets out of the box and filled the cylinder, then snapped it back into place. The whole operation had taken less than half a minute.
“You don’t need that.” Alice’s voice was more whisper than words.
“It’s not for me,” he said. “It’s for you.”
“Me?”
“I made my promise to you, that I’m coming back soon and that I’ll never leave again. Now you’ve got to make a promise to me. If anyone you don’t know comes to the door—anyone—you’ll be ready to use this.”
“Tom, you’re scaring me. What’s this all about?”
“I told you, it’s unfinished business. And I’m sorry that you’re caught up in this—I never wanted any of what I did and who I was to touch you, but there’s people who won’t let it be that way.”
“That man,” she said. “That’s the man you worked for in New York.”
“It is. And if there was some way that I could leave here and know that you and Henry and Gracie were safe as long as I stayed away for good, I’d do it, believe—”
Alice slapped him hard across the face. She felt the sting in her hand, throbbing, electric with pain and shock. “Don’t you for one minute say that. You’re not getting away from me, now or ever.” She grabbed the revolver by the barrel, as if it were a hammer, and pulled it out of his hand. It was heavier than she had expected; Tom had handled it so easily. “You do what you have to do and then you get back here,” she said. “But if you run away from me—from us—then I’m coming after you with this.”
ALICE AND THE children rode in the truck with Cronin but he would not let them wait with him at the station—not that Alice wanted to. At first, Henry thought that they were off for a grand family adventure, but when he was told that only Tom would be getting on the train he started up with the tears, a signal to the baby to start crying. Soon both of them were in full clamor. Henry didn’t want Tom to leave and it was no fair that he had to stay behind. Why couldn’t he go with Tom, and Gracie would stay with Mommy? This wasn’t the good-bye that Cronin wanted; my God, he didn’t want any sort of good-bye, and certainly not this. Alice gave up trying to quiet the children and when Cronin looked at her amid the wailing he saw her own eyes shining with tears about to fall.
It was twenty minutes to the Rhinecliff station and when they arrived Cronin idled the truck and grabbed his valise from the back. He pulled the envelope that Gavigan had given him out of his pocket and fished out a few bills, which he stuffed into his wallet. The rest he gave to Alice.
“What’s this?” she said.
“Buy them some ice cream,” he said.
“But where did this—”
“Take it,” he said, and she did. He looked straight at her and when he leaned into her she gave him a quick, fierce hug. He said nothing more, and he only once looked over his shoulder as Alice drove off, the baby in a basket at her side and Henry in the rear window calling, Tom! Tom!
JUST TELL ME the truth. That was one of the first things Alice had ever said to him, when he showed up at the farm with nothing but the bag in his hand. Gavigan had sent him upstate chasing a bad debt, but as the train lurched along the Hudson River, he had resolved that he would not go back. That he was done. It was early in the morning, the light was on the opposite bank, and the mist was so thick and the water so close to the mountains that the scene conjured for him the landscape outside Glengarriff, his boyhood home. He thought of the days before he had left for Cork and started heaping sin on top of sin. In Ireland during the war, it had been about making sure the Irish were in charge, and then it became about making sure the right Irish were in charge, but it was also about blood, and how much you could spill, and how the stain never left you. It might have been for a good cause, but he couldn’t tell himself that any longer, not once he went to work for Gavigan.
That day, when he stepped off the train at this very platform, he wasn’t thinking about starting fresh. He was thinking only of stopping. He shuffled as if in a daze into the station, where a hand-lettered note on a bulletin board read HELP WANTED. He might not have given it another look but the second line promised HONEST LABOR and Cronin thought maybe that could be a remedy for his years in the city. He wasn’t seeking wages. He was a country boy who needed dirt on his hands and the sun on his face.